All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [270]
Mephistopheles turned back to her. His army moved toward Fiona, but he growled at them, and instead of charging her they spread out in a wide circle around them.
His meaning was clear: they’d fight, just the two of them.
Fiona barred her teeth. Perfect.
From the swirling smoke, a new pitchfork materialized in Mephistopheles’ hands and he swiped at Fiona. It was huge. He couldn’t miss.
She braced and held her cutting edge before her like a shield. It sliced though the first and second tine—but the last tine twisted under her edge and swept out her legs.
Fiona tumbled, bounced, but rolled to her feet. That blow should have snapped her shins like matchsticks, but her Infernal hate made her invulnerable.
Her vision tinged red with pulsing blood and rage. One thought throbbed in her mind with each heartbeat: Kill.
She swung her chain. It grew a dozen feet longer, links now the size of hubcaps and sharpening to twists of razor. She scrambled toward Mephistopheles.
He had a formed a new pitchfork and thrust it at her.
Fiona grasped her chain in the center and whirled both ends back and forth and cut his weapon to bits.
She gloated over that maneuver—for a split second.
Mephistopheles spun the shaft around and hammered her with the blunt end.
Fiona barely blocked with her forearm. The force sent her skittering back.
But it didn’t even hurt.
She ran toward him, got close, and whipped her chain, letting it out to this full length. It wrapped about his leg. She pulled.
It cut and came free.
The appendage fell away.
But Mephistopheles stepped onto a new leg that formed from the amputated stump; smoke and shadows becoming solid as Fiona watched. He seemed to shrink a tiny bit—not that that mattered: he was still ten times her size.
She stared, not believing it. Her rage cooled to confusion . . . and then fear.
He clubbed her with a gauntleted fist.
Fiona slammed into the ground, face first. Ice cracked and she struggled to rise from a spreading pool of her own spit and blood.
That she felt.
She shook her head and stood—
—in time for Mephistopheles to hit her again.
She’d done this before, though, fighting Mr. Ma, and her hands remembered, even if she didn’t: they raised her chain—cut metal and flesh and the bones of Mephistopheles’ armored hand.
Fiona grinned and felt satisfaction pulse though her. Ha! Let’s see him hit her now without a weapon or a hand to wield it.
But in a heartbeat a fresh pitchfork appeared in Mephistopheles’ other hand—and he jabbed—caught her square in her gut.
Ribs shattered. Fiona fell.
Pain blotted out everything: her rage . . . her grief . . . and her consciousness wavered.
He stood over her and set the butt end of his pitchfork on her body, immobilizing her against the ground.
“GO HOME,” the Infernal Lord rumbled down at her.
He snagged her chain and flicked it far away.
Mephistopheles shrank to the size of a man.
“Whh-what?” she managed, although this brilliant reply took the last of her breath. Did she hear right? Was he telling her to leave and not killing her?
“This is not your fight, noble born,” Mephistopheles said. “You are used and know it not.”
Fiona didn’t have her chain anymore—but her rubber band was still on her wrist.
She pull it out into a line, squirmed, turned and—
Mephistopheles slapped her square in the face.
Sensation left her body in a flash of black stars . . . until throbbing pain returned her to the shadowy world.
“Do not try my patience,” Mephistopheles whispered. “Take your brother and withdraw.”
Fiona’s vision cleared.
The shadows and clouds and smoke about Mephistopheles were now wisps. He wore Maximilian armor of thick cast iron, encrusted with spikes and scratched by countless claws. His helmet had horns and a stylized hawk’s beak.
“Why would you let us go?”
“Question not the quality of my mercy,” he told her.
Fiona should have marched off the battlefield, grateful for any mercy, but she felt a flicker of her old anger. “You killed Robert. And Jezebel.”
“I tried not to,” he said. “I know what they meant to you and Eliot. It was never